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Monday, 14 March 2016

Easter M&M's

Thanks to my kind eBay supplier of all things M&M's I was fortunate enough to receive a bag of each of the new Easter M&Ms that have been released in the USA - White Strawberry Shortcake, Easter Sundae & Malt Mini Eggs, I still await the day that Mars decide to release some limited edition M&M's in the UK.

White Strawberry Shortcake

With a base of white chocolate these M&Ms are meant to be reminiscent of a strawberry shortcake dessert which normally consists of strawberries, cake and whipped cream. The M&Ms are coloured for each component - a light pastel pink, beige and white respectively.

Opening the packet they certainly have a strong aroma of strawberry, reminding me of the smell of strawberry Skittles, I hoped that they would not be sickly sweet.

Thankfully they are not, of course they are sweet, I mean its white chocolate and strawberry after all, but they are not of that throat burning, cloying variety. The white chocolate is pleasantly creamy and they have a nice fruity strawberry flavour to them; however they are missing the shortcake element of 'strawberry shortcake'which is slightly annoying but quite often companies will call a flavour something and then miss out various components. Any way, apart from that slight qualm they're really tasty, in fact one of my favourite flavour M&Ms I've had, probably coming 2nd after my beloved White Peppermint variety.

Easter Sundae

Nice play on words Mars, I get you, I get you...Easter 'Sunday/Sundae'. These M&Ms are predominantly white chocolate based but also have a small layer of milk chocolate before being coated in their candy shell to give the effect of a vanilla/chocolate ice cream sundae as shown by Mr M&M on the packaging.Unfortunately they're not amazing, I think it would have been better if they had flavoured the white chocolate with vanilla because without this you're just met with a sweet white chocolate and a milk chocolate that is ultimately lost in the eat. A simple dash of vanilla could have injected some life into this. Not awful but not particularly inspiring either.

Malt Mini Eggs

I know Mars don't produce Maltesers in the USA but they still produce them as a company and I therefore hoped that these Mini Eggs would have the same kind of malty texture and flavour of classic UK Maltesers but with a crispy shell atop the milk chocolate. Unfortunately they did not.

To call these 'eggs' is a bit of far reach, more random shaped, bobbly M&M bits; they're more akin to that of the UK size of M&M.

As said previously there's nothing massively malty about them, in fact I would say they are much more like crispy M&Ms both in texture and in flavour, now if they had been like Maltesers that would have been something else but instead they are massively lacking in the malt department!

White Strawberry Shortcake definitely was the best out of the three, a flavour that I would pick up again if I had the chance; the other two I wouldn't be particularly bothered if they weren't released again next year.

Taste - 7.0/10 - White Strawberry Shortcake - delicious. The other two, just okay.Texture - 6.9/10 - Larger M&Ms, the two purely chocolate filled ones are therefore more satisfying and provide a nice bite. The Malt ones were a bit too crispy.Appearance - 6.8/10 - Look nice enough, to call the Malt ones 'eggs' is a bit of a far reach.Price - 6.9/10 - Depending on how many packs you buy they range from ~£5-£7ish. I would definitely pay this for the White Strawberry Shortcake variety but maybe not the Easter Sundae/Malt variety.Overall - 6.9/10 - Not massively inspiring Easter flavours, I'm not sure whether they have released Carrot Cake again in the US but I would have much preferred to see that or something slightly more adventurous than 'Easter Sundae'.

__________________________________________________________________________WHO FOR?Quite fun for an alternative Easter treat, would be nice to decorate Easter bakes.